Dana Polan on Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Dana Polan on Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Friday, December 13, 4:30 pm
Michelson Theater, 721 Broadway, Room 648

“My book (BFI Film Classics, 2024) — and the talk that I will base on it — argue that Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind (1977) is a movie very much of its cinematic moment, combining the gritty realism of the New Hollywood of the first part of the decade with the latter fascination in the decade for a cinema of effects and visually impactful spectacle.

Close Encounters is a movie movie — content matching form to enact cinematic seduction and display the deep affective powers of an emergent mode of blockbuster cinema.”

Dana Polan is the Martin Scorsese Professor and department chair in the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies.

This is an in-person event, open to the public. Prior registration is required at least 24 hours before the start of the event. Non-NYU attendees will receive emailed instructions for building access and may be asked to present a government-issued photo ID upon arrival. NYU attendees must present their NYU ID.